Generations And War

By Rod Dreher • August 21, 2012, 5:24 PM

That’s my son Lucas and my dad, his grandfather, today at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. It was a good trip. My dad was Lucas’s age when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. It was interesting listening to him in the back seat on the way to New Orleans, telling Lucas how anxious it was to be a little boy out in the country during the war, learning how to spot planes by their profiles overhead, listening to the radio at night for news of the war, wondering when his father (who was out building airports and things for the war effort) would come home. In the photo above, my father is explaining to Lucas what a flamethrower (see far right, inside the display case) was used for. Unimaginably horrible. The boy can’t really fathom what that means. Looking at this myself, I recalled reading William Manchester’s memoir of fighting in the Pacific Theater, “Goodbye, Darkness,” and trying to wrap my mind around the idea of burning people to death with napalm via flamethrower.

The thing I kept thinking as I went through the museum: Please, God, spare my sons the agony of war.

Posted in Family, War. Tagged Family, war, World War II.

72 Responses to Generations And War

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Joe the Plutocrat says:

August 22, 2012 at 11:22 am

@Franklin Evans, this is true; and it goes back to The Red Badge of Courage. About 35 years ago I took a course in 20th Century American History (very liberal, ex-hippie prof). part of the curriculum was to watch/write an essay on “The Best Years of Our Lives”. A few weeks ago the film ran on TCM and I was stunned to see how superficial my understanding of (post) WWII America and the film itself. I realize it was “fiction” but the title itself speaks volumes about who really picks up the tab for war.
Art Deco says:

August 22, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Which brings me to my question: what exactly is your “end-game” here? Your relatives experienced war, apparently, as an invigorating experience–one that filled them with a sense of pride and duty. Fine. But how is that in itself an argument for the prudence or worthiness of war itself? Should we embrace war because some portion of its (surviving) participants will get a thrill from it?

I have no ‘end game’. I am not sure what that could mean in this discussion. I have stated repeatedly my purposes in transparent language. Reread and you will understand me.

Just to clarify, my relations did their military service and had no complaints about the military as an institution. One was a military professional. I cannot say that they found it ‘invigorating’, merely that they completed their service without any bitterness. One of my great uncles was a combat veteran; no, he gave no indication of being badly scarred by it.

I would not offer arguments concerning the prudence or worthiness of ‘war’, merely of particular wars.
Art Deco says:

August 22, 2012 at 12:08 pm

On trend the next generation of American soldiers will be fighting in equatorial Africa and maybe, to a lesser degree, equatorial South America.

Come again? There have not been any interstate wars of any description in South America since 1935. Inland, the equitorial regions tend to be sparsely populated and poor.

As for Africa, the equitorial regions are nearly the most impoverished places on Earth and comparatively difficult to maneuver in due to their biogeography. They are not located on a ready transit route between potential major powers, either. There is some mineral wealth there, but it is difficult to imagine that you could make a business case for that.

The next war(s) will involve at most a few tens of thousands of twenty year olds from crappy urban areas and dying small towns, many of them misfits, dollied up with all kinds of electro-optical gadgetry and firepower and ridiculously expensive machines to fly and drive. They will be tasked with putting bombs and bullets into peasants’ sons with AK-47s and RPGs in faraway tropical rain forests. And not really understand the point, either.

I do not think the contemporary biometrics and psychometrics of the military are at all congruent with this.
Art Deco says:

August 22, 2012 at 12:11 pm

hate break up the party, but war is; and always has been the 99% protecting the wealth (and often producing more wealth – see Sam Wainright, who made millions making airplane canopies…) of the 1%

Rubbish. War is undertaken for political objectives. You cannot make a business case for it nor identify any segment of the population that benefit from it bar perhaps those directly engaged in contracting.
Beyng says:

August 22, 2012 at 12:25 pm

Art Deco@12:08:

I think what your interlocutor meant was that, once we conclude major operations in the Middle East, equatorial Africa and South America present the most likely and tangible threats to American interests. As our dependence on Middle Eastern oil wanes, our dependence on oil from the chronically unstable regimes of Africa (Nigeria, Sudan, etc.) waxes. Brazil is also an increasing supplier of oil to America. South America, moreover, is home to quite a number of drug cartels. Africa, meanwhile, is the “new” home of terrorism (cf. Sudan and Somalia). Both continents also currently promise to serve as proxies for a “cold” war with China, since a direct confrontation is unlikely to occur.

Meanwhile, have you checked out the demographics of the military lately? A disproportionate number of enlisted members are underachievers–educationally and vocationally speaking–from poor households in burnt-out rural areas (especially in Appalachia) and post-industrial urban areas. Many of them join the military because they want a “way out” and can’t find other stable career options. I’m not issuing a judgment here. These are simply facts.
TheRightRadical says:

August 22, 2012 at 2:05 pm

Yeah right Art. You’re not Mr. Cliché’. You’re a propagandist.
“The point is to avoid injustice, which may or may not mean avoidance of war”.
Nothing more, then an excuse to run around the world, and engage in Imperialism, under the guise of “White Man’s Burden” aka “American Exceptionalism”
“This seems incomplete. Do you want them also spared the agonies of subjugation? (Read Robert O. Paxton’s accounts of life in Vichy France). Illness and death? Well, too bad, because it will happen”.
What foreign entity is going to occupy America, without committing National Suicide? This is nothing more than attempt to justify. The “we have to fight them over there, so we don’t have fight them over here”, canard.
“No, Franklin. Putting the wicked in their place is a good. The trouble is, all decisions are made prospectively and you cannot readily predict outcomes”.
This is Messianic! Are you going to fight, and root out wickedness in every corner of the globe? And if you do try, how can be certain you don’t harm the innocent, or become the very wickedness you are trying to stomp out? And who determines who is wicked, and who is not? The President? The Congress? How can they be honest when there is so much wealth to be gained by such a policy of CONSTANT warfare, for wickedness will last until the Lord comes again?
“Unborn children are innocents, are unarmed, and are not agents of flagitious foreign governments”.
Yes unborn children, and in fact all children are innocents. Even ones that live under “flagitious foreign governments” And they certainly need no foreigners too exponentially increase their sufferings, via bombs, drones, invasions and sanctions.
So some bored, wrongly educated elitist, can make mental amends to his father’s memory.
TheRightRadical says:

August 22, 2012 at 3:23 pm

War is undertaken for political objectives.”
And in the case of the United States strictly for DOMESTIC political objectives. Except the War of American Independence. I.E. they all have been wars of choice.

You cannot make a business case for it nor identify any segment of the population that benefit from it bar perhaps those directly engaged in contracting.”"

Horsehit, “War is the health of the state” And has given the FEDGOV free license to manage every industry, and economic activity from Agriculture to Zinc mining. Your scope is way too narrow. It has had massive cultural influence on modern society, as well. Perhaps you agree that the one the sole compact for society is to be regimented, and organized in order to engage in constant warfare, against an endless supply of enemies. I don’t know, that seems to be the Machivellian tree you’re barking from.
But this does not enhance civilization, nor does it protect it. It destroys it.

“There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.”
Sun Tzu
Now I’d love to see you argue with him.
TheRightRadical says:

August 22, 2012 at 3:40 pm

Here’s another guy you can argue with ARTIE.

So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who asked him for a king (president). And he said, “This will be the behavior of the king who will REIGN over you: He will take your sons and appoint (draft them or run the the economy into the ground to benefit banksters, and give them a lousy public school education so they have few choices but to enlist) them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. He will appoint captains (Generals) over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest (ADM, Cargill, Monsanto), and some to make his weapons of war and equipment (the military industrial complex) for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers (instead of nurturers, mothers, etc.). And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants (through eminent domain, farm subsidies, and controlling water rights). He will take a tenth (income and property taxes) of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work (all the best engineers, scientists, and other students go into defense, government financed science (global warming for example) and Wall Street Banking). He will take a tenth of your sheep (IRS again). And you will be his servants. And you will cry out in that day because of your king (president) whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the Lord will not hear you in that day.
1Samuel 8-10
cecelia says:

August 22, 2012 at 4:14 pm

I just finished a great book about a oft forgotten part of WWII – dec 1941-Mar 1942 in the Asian Pacific – The Ghost Ship. During these three months the Japanese took all of French Indochina, Malayasia Singapore Indonesia New Guinea Solomon Islands Borneo and the Phillipines – leaving Australia almost totally cut off. 80,000 Brits Aussies Kiwi’s and Indians are taken prisoner and sent to slave labor camps when Singapore falls and 73,000 Americans and Filipinos captured in Philipines – in both cases the worst defeats in the histories of the UK and US. The entire Dutch, American and British naval fleets in the Asiatic are sunk with thousands going down in their ships. Australia and Indonesia are literally surrounded in their coastal waters by the tombs of these men. Utterly horrifying yet inspiring when one considers the bravery of these men. WWII was the worst cataclysm in human history – the capture of Indonesia alone resulted in 4 million dead.

I think we have forgotten just how terrible the war was – and so lost the sense of caution that is absolutely necessary in foreign affairs. The hawks in our politics need a reminder of the cost of war for sure.
cecelia says:

August 22, 2012 at 4:17 pm

and on the possibility someone will read this – it is a myth that poor urban minorities constitute our military – the military is representative geographically, racially, and economically of the US as a whole. One exception – the so called 1% ain’t in the military. If anyone disaproportionatly bears the burden of service it is the middle and upper middle class. See the Pew study.
John E_o says:

August 22, 2012 at 5:44 pm

You cannot make a business case for it nor identify any segment of the population that benefit from it bar perhaps those directly engaged in contracting.

Yeah….Cheney/Haliburton….I think there is a flaw in your larger argument.
Art Deco says:

August 22, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Right Radical, you need to sober up before you comment any more.
Art Deco says:

August 22, 2012 at 6:15 pm

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2011/10/war-and-sacrifice-in-the-post-9-11-era.pdf

Beyng, if you page forward to the page 73 (which is the 79th leaf of the document), you see the beginnings of the demographic profile of the military.

As we speak, about 18% of those in the military have a baccalaureate degree or advanced degree. The proportion in the population at large over age 25 is currently 28%. The military skews young, however, and some will pick up degrees later.

At the other end of the spectrum, 99% of all recruits have a high school diploma or GED. The share for the general population is more along the lines of 85%. As a matter of practice, the military does not accept recruits whose psychometric scores are a standard deviation or more below the median, so the 15% or so with the poorest measurable performace is excluded. Likewise you have to be physically fit to enter the military. If you look over the entire period from 1948 to 1973, about a quarter of those examined for military service were disqualified on medical or psychological grounds. I would wager it is higher in the era of the professional military.

Military recruits do differ systematically from the general population, but the notion that they are dopey losers cannot be taken seriously.

I might also point out that diversification of supply sources reduces the salience of any particular source. Thirty odd years ago, about 52% of all proven reserves were concentrated in a constricted geographic zone which has for other reasons had a great many scores building up for settlement. South America has intramural social conflicts and most Latin American countries have high crime rates, but I do not know why you would posit that would lead to inter-state wars. The number of American personnel billetted in Latin America and the Caribbean is one-tenth of what it was 60 years ago, in spite of drug interdiction efforts, &c.
Art Deco says:

August 22, 2012 at 7:01 pm

Yeah….Cheney/Haliburton….I think there is a flaw in your larger argument.

No, there is not a flaw. You cannot run the numbers and find a generalized economic benefit accruing to the country at large from the Iraq war, nor can you find one accruing to the patrician social stratum. You can likely find particular commercial companies which benefited. Michael Moore tried to peddle the idea that the war in Afghanistan was undertaken so the Unocal Corporation could build a pipeline (which they never did). This sort of silliness has a constituency, but the rest of us are not obliged to take it seriously.
TheRightRadical says:

August 22, 2012 at 7:29 pm

Right Radical, you need to sober up before you comment any more.”

Art: [deleted]. And you just got pwn’d by someone you would have called white trash, if we had met many years ago. You have my pity.

[Note from Rod: OK, guys, you've both had your say. Let's move on. -- RD]
TheRightRadical says:

August 22, 2012 at 8:04 pm

You cannot run the numbers and find a generalized economic benefit accruing to the country at large from the Iraq war”
All the more reason not to choose wars of choice wouldn’t you say?
nor can you find one accruing to the patrician social stratum.” As ugly Nancy would say: “Are you kidding?”
Michael Moore” yes because really we are all closet leftists, who hate capitalism, and America. Here at the American Conservative, and you’re only to enlighten with the purity that is the modern Bushian Republicanism. I honestly don’t think you’ll find many converts here. Besides we have history and the future on our side. Loser
J the second says:

August 22, 2012 at 9:14 pm

Come again? There have not been any interstate wars of any description in South America since 1935. Inland, the equatorial regions tend to be sparsely populated and poor.

But precisely that is the problem. There are ongoing wars in the jungles of nominally Colombia, Ecuador, and surrounding countries. These involve relatively faceless actors such as drug cartels and their leaders and organizers, local warlords and militias initially set up to protect drug production, nominally political guerrilla groups (e.g. FARC), state actors that protect and manipulate these (e.g. Chavez). In short, there’s a diffuse violent anarchic region in these jungles which nation-state governments, notably Colombia’s, have not been able to defeat and suppress. This area in turn sustains organized crime and organized crime ‘families’ that go right up to and somewhat across the US/Mexican border.

For now we treat it as an annoyance. In Colombia and much of Latin America this problem- a mafia state based in the jungles but extending far beyond them in messing up civil life- is a central fact of life. At some point it has be made to end.

As for Africa, the equatorial regions are nearly the most impoverished places on Earth and comparatively difficult to maneuver in due to their biogeography. They are not located on a ready transit route between potential major powers, either. There is some mineral wealth there, but it is difficult to imagine that you could make a business case for that.

Well, the math in the significant American wars since the Spanish-American War isn’t really econonic. It’s that a region of the world becomes a political problem Americans can no longer ignore and annoys them into action. In the case of West/South Asia, the latest American war region, people came from there and set off bombs and crashed airliners into buildings on American soil to ensure that we did not ignore them and their problems. Americans have spent far more on the wars since 1898 than they could possibly get back. But in the wake of these wars democracy has sprouted and grown everywhere these wars crushed its opposites. That is America’s gift to the world, not always appreciated immediately but often in the longer run.

The reason I see central Africa as the war zone of the next generation is quite simply that that’s what will be left. There’s still armed waiting out for Russia and China to crumble away their occupied territories and ugly regimes they keep in power to annoy us (in e.g. Belarus and North Korea) to fall from within. But that’s unlikely to result in outright wars.

In the Middle East the invasion of 2003 did take out the chaos creating third power of the region, Iraq, and (like post-WW2 Europe) the countries of the region have formed two alliances in a standoff. Basically the alliance run out of Teheran can’t last much longer for the same reasons the USSR’s couldn’t in the 1980s.

In Central and South Asia the constraint on functional statehood is that Pakistan’s boundaries are still wrong. The disputes about them distract all involved from settling internal conflicts as relatively well as India has. In short what is needed is a breakup of Afghanistan, which is inviable as a nation-state, into its Indic and Central Asian halves for the time being. Then things will sort out.

That pretty much does it for Eurasia. We can pretty much eliminate North Africa, southern Africa to Zimbabwe, and the southern two thirds of South America as plausible significant war areas. What’s left are equatorial Africa and parts of equatorial South America. Which are what’s left precisely because they’re inaccessible and the worst places for Western forces to fight in. And the material resources and populations don’t seem worth having a major fight about.

The reason to go fight in these two areas is because that’s where the wars, dictators, warlords, and terrorisms (e.g. El Shebab) and large scale psychopathy that remain will be. The world will be New York City after four of its five Mafia families were dismantled- you can ignore the last one in the crappiest borough for a time and feel very good about having defeated four. But the fifth Mafia family will not stop being what it is and will not stop doing what it does- gather in criminals, perpetrate crimes, make victims. It considers every day it operates unimpeded a defiance of and victory over people better than themselves.

We can tolerate and ignore such for a while. But in the course of time doing so becomes incompatible with our integrity and our ability and our competence. If we have to go we’ll go to the Heart Of Darkness to put an end to it. On the merits should be reason enough.
TheRightRadical says:

August 22, 2012 at 9:37 pm

Ok Rod
I’m sorry I was having too much fun, and just cracked open a new bottle of Makers Mark.
Art Deco says:

August 23, 2012 at 7:43 am

J, the intramural violence in Colombia has been an abiding feature of that country’s social life since 1948. There is not a secular trend in favor of political violence there, quite the contrary. Even prior to successful offenses against FARC et al in the last 10 years, the clip of political violence was about one-fifth of what it was in the years running from 1948 to 1962. There is a dormant insurgency camped out in remote areas of Peru. There are no insurgencies elsewhere. With regard to insurrectional violence, Latin America as a whole is as staid as it has been at any time in the last 60 years and its political practice more orderly than at any time in its history.

the latest American war region, people came from there and set off bombs and crashed airliners into buildings on American soil to ensure that we did not ignore them and their problems.

No, people crashed airliners into buildings because it pleased them to do so. Their mix of preferences are eccentric and are not a phenomenon one would expect to find or plan for anywhere else. And they were not looking for assistance with “their problems”. Their problems are social psychological and about the only thing we might be able to do about them is forcibly suppress their expression (which I do not think they were asking us to do).

The reason I see central Africa as the war zone of the next generation is quite simply that that’s what will be left.

Yeah, yeah yeah. You figure Wm. Kristol and his buds need to keep themselves continually occupied.
John E_o says:

August 23, 2012 at 8:09 am

You can likely find particular commercial companies which benefited.

Particular companies in which the people directly responsible for starting the post 9-11 military operations had a strong interest.

You might not like the idea that the US was stampeded into unnecessary wars so that Bush, Cheney and their close friends would benefit financially, but it explains much about what happened.
Art Deco says:

August 23, 2012 at 10:25 am

You might not like the idea that the US was stampeded into unnecessary wars so that Bush, Cheney and their close friends would benefit financially, but it explains much about what happened.

It explains nothing. You are presuming that the lot of them are so mercenary they start a war and spend hundreds of billions of dollars in public money to line the pockets of people once associated with the vice president. What was in it for the President or Condi Rice (since you think they all make decisions based on what’s in it for each of them)?
J the second says:

August 23, 2012 at 11:53 pm

J, the intramural violence in Colombia has been an abiding feature of that country’s social life since 1948. …. With regard to insurrectional violence, Latin America as a whole is as staid as it has been at any time in the last 60 years and its political practice more orderly than at any time in its history.

I think we agree about more than we disagree. My view is that it may yet take a final effort in the region involving a military force to get at the root the last really persistent problem of organized violence. It will very probably be a much lesser fight than what will occur in Africa. It may be negligible and require nothing more. But it may amount to, with small probability, a fight with Chavez’s forces and/or cartel militias making a last stand for their “freedom” to do wrong to local people.

No, people crashed airliners into buildings because it pleased them to do so. Their mix of preferences are eccentric and are not a phenomenon one would expect to find or plan for anywhere else. And they were not looking for assistance with “their problems”. Their problems are social psychological and about the only thing we might be able to do about them is forcibly suppress their expression (which I do not think they were asking us to do).

I’ll gladly give you that Al Qaeda was a bunch of murder-suicidal people with an insane, incoherent, and unrealizable nominal political agenda. But we have to admit that they were right about some big picture things- that the part of the world between Casablanca and Karachi was an awful mess with lots of horrible governments. And a region in which American government actions and interests were supporting an intolerable status quo in 2001, though mostly inadvertently. The only material power that sustained and could feasibly break this status quo was the U.S.A.

On the historical record there was potential that U.S. could act to an end result of good order. Though most in the Middle East express an unbelief at this, it is a very vocal unbelief precisely because its inherent plausibility remains high. That very vocal unbelief can also be regarded as provocation, as urging Americans to do more and prove the opposite. (Reading conservative websites will teach you a lot about the unintentional help-begging nature of vociferous complaining and b-tching excoriations.)

I think of Al Qaeda as a classic example of evil, helpless to do good itself but unwittingly desiring it, manifesting itself and provoking the powers of the world to destroy itself and (this is its service) its basis and its grievance. In a more subtle way, likewise for the ‘Coalition of the Willing’.

Yeah, yeah yeah. You figure Wm. Kristol and his buds need to keep themselves continually occupied.

I have no love for people who have made a search for monsters and then urging us to kill them their life’s work. They’re monsters and in the murder business themselves.

But you can’t have six continents that are cleaned up and leave one to serve as the planet’s established waste dump and gangland ghetto.